Father’s Day 2017

I don’t have too many pictures for Father’s day, but I definitely had some I wanted to share ;)

It was so nice to have John home for most of the day – he had canceled his extra meetings before church so we got to have him home in the morning AND he didn’t have interviews in the afternoon, so we got him for most of the afternoon too!

In my opinion, John is really hard to shop for (he’ll tell you he’s really easy, he says wants a truck and a racing bike and he’s good ;) ) but I managed to find some fun things for me and the boys to give him. My favorite though, was this really awesome car track massage shirt – it has a little car track on the back of the shirt, so John puts it on, lays on his stomach and the boys play cars on his back, giving him a massage. Brilliant, right?!

It worked great until - Spencer decided to sit on John’s head…

I think they all still had fun, I think John’s used to being a human jungle gym by now. ;)

We are sooooo lucky to have John, he is seriously such a wonderful husband and Daddy to our boys. We love you!!

Happy Star Wars Day! And Baby#3 FAQ

This post is brought to you by the fact that my mom (unintentionally) made me feel guilty about not making a cute/pinterest-y announcement for Baby #3. I mean, I did cute stuff for the other two…Oh yeah, by the way, we’re pregnant ;)

Since this idea had been in the back of my mind anyway and today is Star Wars Day, I thought it all worked out perfectly, don’t you? ;)

(these are the decals on my car – fun, huh?)

And since I’m here, some FAQ’s

When in October are you due?
Mid October! That puts me at about 16 1/2 weeks along right now. Soooo not far enough if you ask me ;)

When do you find out the gender?
We find out May 25th. The anticipation is KILLING ME, PEOPLE!

8 Week Sonogram

How are you feeling?
I’m not doing too bad, actually. This first trimester was my easiest first trimester of all my pregnancies. I haven’t thrown up once!! That’s not to say that I haven’t felt sick, but I’m grateful it hasn’t been worse. My gag reflex is still on high alert though. I gag every time I brush my teeth still. And I get hungry about every two hours (sometimes sooner). I’ve been that way every pregnancy now. I eat ALL THE TIME. At least I’m not waking up in the middle of the night to eat anymore. Now that I’m a little bit further along, I have a little more energy, so that has been nice. But my current children make me oh so very tired. Sooooo tired…

What’s this I hear about a blood/antibody issue?
So after my initial bloodwork, they came back and told me that there were antibodies in my blood that were not mine, and that my red blood cells were attacking these antibodies. Well, they belong to the baby, and the baby needs them, so that’s a little bit of an issue. (I’m still not sure at this point how they ended up in my blood, because it’s possible that Nathan and/or Spencer have this same antibody, and we didn’t have this problem with either of them, but I have yet to receive an explanation that I actually understand) At this point I just have to get monthly blood work done so that we can keep an eye on the ratio of my red blood cells to this antibody to make sure my system isn’t getting rid of too many (if that happens, the baby could become anemic). So far things have stayed at safe levels, and the doctors don’t anticipate it being a big issue, but we’re going to watch it.

Have you picked out any names?
I’m completely stumped on names, so I’m open to suggestions. I don’t think I’m going to seriously think about it until after we know the gender. It narrows things down quite a bit, you know.

12 Week Sonogram

Are you hoping for a girl this time?
We will totally be happy either way, but if I could choose, I think I want another boy. I have all the stuff already, and John doesn’t want me to spend all our money on girl clothes (hee hee). Also, I’m kind of terrified of the idea of raising a girl. I’m at least used to the idea of raising boys, even if I don’t really know what I’m doing. ;)

What do your boys think about all of it?
Well, Spencer has no idea, he’s just not old enough to understand what’s going on. I’m not big enough for him to really notice a difference in my physical appearance just yet, but we’ve told Nathan there’s a baby in Mommy’s tummy and he talks about it occasionally. I asked him the other day if he thought it was going to be a brother or a sister and he told me (with this huge grin on his face) that it was going to be a sister. We’ll see if he’s right in a couple of weeks!

 

And I think that’s it for now, we’re just plugging along and staying busy and being crazy. You know, the usual.

May the 4th be with you! ;)

Easter Celebrations 2017

We had a whole weekend of family fun for Easter this year. It was soooo nice to have so much family time!

Ever since John started working out here he’s had Good Friday off, so we planned a trip to Port Discovery for the kids. It was still pretty busy because it was everyone else’s spring break, but it wasn’t too crowded and we still spent a good 4 hours there.

They still had the Thomas exhibit up, so that was really fun for the boys.

Saturday we had some Easter activities. After lunch we decorated cookies. Well, Nathan decorated cookies and Spencer ate his way steadily through his supply of frosting and sprinkles. And maybe a cookie. Or two.


After we got them all hopped up on sugar we put them down for naps and quiet time (Parenting Win – “You just go sleep all that off, buddy”). After that we got them all set up to color eggs. It was a little tricky with Spencer, I was mostly trying to make sure he didn’t spill all the colors all over the place and I only had one whisk that could fit the egg inside and into the jars we use for the color. We did come up with the idea to color on the eggs with crayons and he seemed to like that.

I’d only boiled a dozen eggs so we finished with that pretty quickly. John ended up taking the boys to the playground afterwards to get some extra energy out and so that I could work on dinner. Spencer came back looking like a chimney sweep, he’d faceplanted in the dirt so many times – good thing they were getting baths!

Easter morning the boys got to open up their “Easter presents”. They mostly got books (I really didn’t make an effort on candy – I’m hitting up the Easter clearance tomorrow, I’ve been waiting ALL YEAR for my starburst jelly beans!!) They also got matching Easter ties – because matching ties is seriously one of my most favorite things about having boys ;) John even got one too!

And I tried SO HARD to get a cute Easter picture of them matching. SO HARD friends. My kids are impossible ;)

I thought maybe adding John would help. Nope.

So we tried again later. We got some pretty hilarious ones though.

They amazingly kept their hats on at church. Nathan actually loved his and didn’t want to take his off and now that Spencer wants to be just like Nathan, well, that helped, haha.

We had a busy day at church and then we went over to some friends for an Easter egg hunt and a potluck dinner. (I forgot my camera for the egg hunt! so sad! But John strapped his GoPro to Nathan’s head for the egg hunt so we have some exclusive footage from his point of view). Then they basically had candy for dinner. And some strawberries. ;)

It has been such a fun weekend and looking at these pictures as I’ve been working on this post makes me so grateful for this crazy little family of mine. And I am so grateful for a Savior and Redeemer who made it possible to live again with our loved ones. I know He lives! 

Happy Easter!

Love Day Cookies

When I was making my mom’s school themed birthday cookies, I had quite a bit of dough leftover, so I decided to have some fun and make some valentine’s day cookies.

(this was also a good excuse to use some of those cutters that I buy but totally don’t need – I just get them because they are cute. And now I can say that I’ve used them, hee hee)

I’m pretty sure chocolate dipped strawberry cookies are my new favorite thing.
Some Paris themed cookies – because what’s more romantic than Paris?
Donut and hot chocolate cookies! These were Nathan’s favorite ;)

Now I’m itching to make more cookies, but then I just end up having all these cookies sitting around in my kitchen with no one to eat them. Whatever shall I do? ;)

Christmas Time Catch Up

Alright, so I’ve mentioned I’ve been busy. So here’s a little bit of what we were up to last month and what kept me so busy :)

Apart from it being my turn to teach preschool last month I was also in charge of doing our preschool Christmas party. I was really excited to do it, but when I volunteered for the Christmas party, I hadn’t realized how many other things I’d have going on in the same week!

My brother and sister-in-law flew in and stayed a night with us before heading down to VA for the family festivities, I was making cookies and sewing Harry Potter robes for our surprise birthday party we were throwing for my sister-in-law the day after Christmas (it took some strategic planning to get stuff done while she was staying at my house). I was finishing up Christmas preparations, as we’d have to bring everything with us to my parent’s house - where we’d be spending Christmas day - I sang in church, and had a preschool Christmas party! AND we bought a car to replace John’s current car (that was dying) and drove to my parents for Christmas. Whew!

We made gingerbread houses for FHE the night my brother and sister-in-law were here and we were also doing some for the preschool party. So I made a BUNCH. All my kitchen surfaces were overflowing with cookie things and gingerbread houses.

I may be professionally trained in pastry, but it appears the graham cracker gingerbread house defeats me. ;) But I highly recommend using caramelized sugar to build your houses (whether gingerbread of graham cracker). Easy to make, and it sets up in minutes. No waiting for frosting to dry! It just drips a lot. And is VERY HOT.

I think the party went really well. The kids really enjoyed decorating their houses and eating all the candy ;)

Nathan was getting to be quite the little decorator. I was so proud!

I have very few pictures of Christmas day, but we’ll just say it’s because I was enjoying the moments (and not too busy keeping my crazies out of trouble). Some highlights were matching jammies and a new Christmas book, we also had the boys pick out presents for each other and exchange them on Christmas eve, Nathan got the Hot Wheels car transporter he has wanted for months, and Spencer didn’t have any desire to open presents after he’d opened his first one, which was a collection of racecars from the movie Cars. He actually cried when John tried to move them out of the way so that he could open another one, ha! So it took him a while before he was interested in anything else.

The boys exchanging gifts – Nathan gave Spencer a police helicopter, and Spencer gave Nathan a play-doh set ;)

So many presents waiting to be opened!!!

Matching jammies!!!

Present opening and playing!
After church and a lovely Christmas program, we had waffles and berries and ice cream!

It was a really good Christmas!

One of the days we were there we drove to Richmond to go to the Virginia Science Center. It was really cool!
I took Nathan to the bathroom before the long drive home and this is what I came out to – basically these two should never be left unattended, they get up to all sorts of mischief ;)
Naturally Nathan and Papa joined in the fun

For most of the week we ate yummy food, played lots of games, we also saw Rogue One and threw our surprise birthday party for Eryn (it’s getting its own post, pictures are coming, I promise!).

It was such a good week! It was hard to come home, but we brought lots of fun memories with us :)